# Goddess
**by Rhonda Owen**

These days, I look like the fertility goddess,
tumescent tummy hanging low,
pregnant with improbable possibility.
Then the thighs, fluffy and rounded
on squat, sturdy legs, feet splayed wide.
Oh, and the breasts, pendulous
and swinging free.

I was given the goddess as a gift,
a gesture of goodwill to help catch the baby
I was reaching for, but kept missing.
The goddess lived in the upstairs closet,
sleeping with the miller's wife, the untamed shrew,
a handmaid, and Bathsheba.
I hated her.
One day, I carried her outside,
kicked her thick body to the curb,
clapped my hands and said so long,
I hope to see you never,

But she was in the mirror
this morning, there in the steam-streaked glass,
wet and gleaming,
curves and mounds,
voracious and
breathing warm hunger